House Democrats have released emails suggesting Donald Trump was aware of Jeffrey Epstein's sex-trafficking activities, including one in which Epstein wrote that 'of course [Trump] knew about the girls'. The three messages were published by the House oversight committee, intensifying pressure on the White House to release the full Epstein files.
In an April 2011 email to Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein claimed Trump had spent time with one of his victims, stating that 'that dog that hasn’t barked is trump.. [victim’s name redacted] spent hours at my house with him'. Maxwell replied, 'I have been thinking about that'. Another email from Epstein to a Trump biographer in January 2019 said that Trump 'knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop'.
The Republican majority on the committee countered by releasing 23,000 documents of their own, accusing Democrats of 'cherry picking' the memos for 'clickbait'. Trump took to Truth Social to dismiss the allegations as a 'Jeffrey Epstein Hoax' and urged focus on reopening the government.
A third email from Epstein to journalist Michael Wolff in 2015 discussed crafting a response for Trump to anticipated questions about their relationship. Epstein suggested that if Trump denied knowing him, it could be used against him. Trump has consistently denied knowledge of Epstein's crimes, which included running a sex-trafficking ring.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the release a 'manufactured hoax' and said the unnamed victim was Virginia Giuffre, who had worked at Mar-a-Lago but never accused Trump of wrongdoing. Giuffre, who died in April, had stated in her memoir that Trump was always appropriate.
